


A Tale of Lake Omen

by SonneillonV



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: M/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-07-30
Updated: 2013-08-06
Packaged: 2017-12-21 20:37:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,154
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/904649
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SonneillonV/pseuds/SonneillonV
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Night Vale High School's drama club hosts a mandatory play.  Carlos takes Cecil on another date.  Lake Omen is the perfect spot for a romantic weekend getaway.  Desert Bluffs Cacti are best grilled over charcoal.  A flock of local birds may or may not be the vengeful hand of an angry extradimensional being.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. A School Play, Ambient Howling, and A Mandatory Phone Call

**Author's Note:**

> When the Earth is dark And Night comes, comes the unseen, Earthly light; a Balefire guiding, By its light. Welcome…. To Night Vale.
> 
> Listeners, a real treat; the drama club at Night Vale High School, in cooperation with the Night Vale Community Theater and the sheriff’s secret police, invites you to come Friday night to the high school auditorium to view the opening night performance of Devil In The Sky – Five Hundred Years of Night Vale History. Starring young Zachary Lopez, who would probably be a very nice young man if he didn’t suffer agonizing transformations into a hulking, winged beast by the light of every full moon, this play promises to be a candid look into the founding and development of our beloved ‘burg. Tickets can be purchased on the school website for seven dollars, or ten dollars at the door. Don’t worry, parents… the full moon isn’t for at least another two weeks, assuming old woman Josey’s astrological calculations are correct, and old woman Josey is almost never wrong. Attendance is mandatory, so get those tickets early and bring the whole family.
> 
> City Hall has just released a statement regarding the recent plague of avian invaders that has been circling ominously in the air above Old Town. The City Council, speaking all in unison, declared that even though blackbirds are not, in fact, a protected species, these particular blackbirds have demonstrated clear signs of being either an omen of impending doom, the avatar of a powerful extradimensional being such as a god of death or carrion, or perhaps the airborn eyes of some hidden entity lurking in preparation to bring judgment to our town. Until we know something for sure, Night Vale Citizens, the Council urges us to err on the side of safety, and do everything in our power to avoid offending the birds. In fact, if you happen to have any carrion or random shiny objects lying around the house such as coins, bits of tinfoil, a collection of gold teeth, or a handful of illegally purchased bloodstones, consider leaving them outdoors as an offering to our feathered visitors. Citizens still in possession of their original biological eyeballs should wear safety goggles until the birds have moved on; after all, there’s no point in breaking a perfectly good streak.
> 
> When in search of a nice spot to build that vacation house, consider Bermuda Triangle Real Estate. For undeveloped land at bargain prices, just call Al.

Zach reached over and turned the radio off. Not that it mattered – there was a similar antique transistor on every table. Thanks to his enhanced hearing there was almost nowhere in Night Vale he could go to escape Cecil’s voice; not that he generally minded it, but now he could almost feel the attention of everyone in the diner shift toward him.  
  
Annie dragged the tip of her spoon through the whipped cream that topped her milkshake. “Just ignore them,” she said sympathetically. “It’s not like everybody doesn’t already know.”  
  
Zach stabbed a french fry into a pool of ketchup. “Yeah,” he argued, “but that doesn’t mean I want them talking about it.”  
  
“Look, the sheriff already said the noise wasn’t your fault. Mrs. Hendricks just needs to find something better to do with her time,” Annie declared as she sucked a dollop of cream off her spoon. “It’s not like bloodthirsty howling or screeching metal fatigue are unusual around here. Tell you what,” she suggested, “I’ll get the band together and we’ll hold a practice in the garage. We can probably drown you out.”  
  
“No,” Zach sighed, still toying with the same fry without eating it. “Music IS a noise violation. The howling is apparently considered… ambient.”  
  
“I wonder what the standard is for ‘ambient’,” Annie pondered as she fished a spoonful of ice cream out of the tall, frosted glass. “Like, if your music was chaotic and disharmonious enough, could it be considered ‘ambient’?”  
  
“I don’t think it’s ‘ambient’ if you can choose to stop,” Zach said dryly. He finally ate the fry, and Will Harris, sitting next to him in the booth, elbowed him gently.  
  
“But it’s cool, though, right?” Will asked, fingertips crawling across the table to touch Zach’s bare wrist as if hoping he wouldn’t notice. “’Cause the next full moon isn’t for a couple weeks.”  
  
Zach ignored both the touch and the subtle energy drain that made his skin prickle into goosebumps. “If it stays on schedule, but who knows if it will? Sometimes we get one every week. Probably should drink The Stuff just to be safe, y’know?”  
  
Annie sighed. “I’ll brew up a new pitcher when we get home. Don’t worry.” She reached over the table and squeezed her brother’s hand, offering him a sweet smile. “The play is going to be great. Everybody will love it, and then that will be all they talk about, not your, you know… problem.”  
  
“Guys! Sorry I’m late!” Scott appeared at the edge of the booth and leaned in to kiss Annie’s cheek before sliding in next to her. There was a pair of bleeding cuts down one of his cheeks and a few tattered black feathers clung to his clothing. There was also blood all over his double-row of serrated, shark-like teeth suggesting he gave as good as he got. “Did you hear? Cecil got our announcement in! We’re mandatory!”  
  
“We heard!” Annie enthused, and then stopped. “Scott!”  
  
Scott tried to look innocent and somehow managed it despite his predatory Cheshire grin. How he accomplished that was a mystery to his friends, but he’d been born with those teeth and that extra-wide smile and even as a small child he’d managed to charm everyone around him despite them. “Wha-at?”  
  
Annie plucked a feather from his shirt. “The City Council said not to offend the birds; they might be the avatars of some kind of vengeful extra-dimensional entity!” she scolded, and Scott looked sheepish.  
  
“I know, but by the time I heard the announcement it was already too late and I was hungry. We should go tourist-hunting,” he suggested, looking around the table for agreement, sighing when he didn’t get it. “Come on, guys, when’s the last time any of us got something really good to eat?” One of the wait staff stopped by and dropped off a plate that held two raw, badly mutated fish still in their scales garnished with fried onion rings and a slice of pickle, then set a glass of Dr. Pepper at Scott’s elbow.  
  
Zach eyed him. “Did the birds taste weird at all? I mean, if they’re avatars of a vengeful deity or even just an omen of impending doom you would think they would taste weird.”  
  
Scott pondered that. “You know, now that you mention it, they did? Kind of like pesticides,” he mused, nibbling on an onion ring, “and cumin. I’m serious, though. Saturday night after the encore performance we should go out to the lake and spend the night, all of us. Get your dad to let you borrow the truck.”  
  
Zach eyed him. “If he lends us the truck we’re going to have to bring him something. You don’t get favors from my dad without tribute.”  
  
“We’ll save him some organs,” Scott said dismissively, spearing one of the fish on his fork and biting off the top half to chew, scales bones and all. “I’ll bring the cooler. There’s always tourists at Lake Omen, they never read the signs. What do you say, buddy?”  
  
Zach took a moment to look at the expectant faces around the booth, then sighed. “Yeah, sure. Are we going to have a cast party?”  
  
Scott crunched on the other half of the fish, adding a bit of pickle for flavor. “I figure we’ll just hit Big Rico’s Pizza, get our mandatory out of the way. If everybody pitches in five bucks we can feed the whole group and get ice cream too. Eat, cut out early, drive on up. We can get the truck loaded before the show and just park it at the school until we’re ready. Sound like a plan?”  
  
Annie beamed at him and bumped him with her hip. “Should I invite anyone?”  
  
“Sure.” Scott flashed her his trademark grin, the one that made all the girls and some of the boys shiver in desire. Or possibly fear. “Bring the whole junior coven if you want. I could use their input because…” He steepled his webbed fingers and his pretty blue-green eyes gleamed. “… I want to talk about our senior prank.”  
  
Annie’s eyes went wide. “Ohhhh. But most of us aren’t seniors,” she pointed out, “Only Jasmine and Rika.”  
  
“Doesn’t matter. I’ll have to swear them all to secrecy but I’m gonna need your help. Tell them to bring their bathing suits,” he advised. “And their incense, the good stuff; black orchid, fire poppy, anise, devil’s weed. We’ll make a night of it.”  
  
“If you're summoning what I think you're summoning you'll need a lot of rum,” Will said quietly. His fingers had wandered over to touch Scott’s wrist, which Scott also studiously ignored. “I’ll bring that.”  
  
“Great, and I’ll bring the beer. Speaking of offerings….” Scott reached into his pocket, wiggled his wallet free, and whipped out a pair of paper slips printed on orange and purple background. He grinned wickedly, brandishing them so Zach could read the stodgy black print across their faces. “So check this out. For announcing us on the program Cecil gets two free tickets to the show Opening Night, right? But after Miss Ksssssshhhhhkkkkt gave them to me I had a better idea.” He allowed a dramatic pause, then said, “Who wants to run down to the lab with me?”  
  
“What lab?” Will asked, at the same time as Zach wondered, “Why do you need to go to the lab?”  
  
Annie, nibbling on her spoon, broke into a playful grin. “Oh, you’re bad. He’ll die.”  
  
Scott grinned. “Right?”  
  
“It’s a good idea,” she declared. “I’ll go if that’s okay, I’ll help in case he needs some convincing.”  
  
Zach gave them both a dry look. “You guys, they’re already dating. Don’t you think setting them up is kinda, I dunno, late?”  
  
Annie shook her head. “Your problem is that you don’t have a romantic bone in your body. You’ve gotta get better about that, Zach,” she said sagely. “Or nobody’s going to want to date you.”  
  
“I dunno,” Scott offered. “I could be convinced.” He nipped a section out of his onion ring and grinned when Zach flushed a little bit. Feeling his cheeks heat, Zach reached over and laid his hand over Will’s, triggering a drain that turned him three shades paler before he let go. Will looked surprised and pleased, wiggling closer to Zach and resting his head on the taller boy’s shoulder. Since his hood was up, Zach didn’t protest – he slid his arm around Will’s back and propped his chin on the top of his head as Will wrapped his hands in the frayed cuffs of his sleeves and drew all his limbs up until the only part of him that was visible was an escaped lock of loosely curled blond hair.  
  
x-x-x  
  
Carlos was jarred out of staring blankly at his centrifuge by the sound of the doors chiming as they swung open. The old gas station he’d refitted as a laboratory still had some of the accoutrements of its former life, including those chimes and a line of defunct pumps in the parking lot. Sometimes it was damned hard to feel like a legitimate researcher coming to work in a place like this, but Carlos had learned to live with it – nothing in Night Vale was really what it seemed, after all.  
  
He reached over and stopped the centrifuge from spinning, blinking at its empty slots, wondering why he’d started it in the first place. He had found himself slipping into fugues more and more often lately, as if his brain was a computer program crashing repeatedly due to Night Vale’s abundant bits of impossible and incomplete code. With nothing better to do, he straightened his tie, ran a hand through his thick fall of jet black hair, and went to see who was at the door.  
  
A pair of teenagers was the last thing he would have expected. Night Vale’s teen set didn’t generally take any interest in his experiments except to give him scornful or pitying looks and shake their heads at what they perceived to be his unending naivety. They had an easy, instinctive comprehension of Night Vale’s interminable inconsistencies that he envied, and the fact that the outside world considered them all freaks didn’t seem to make any impression on them.  
  
“Ah, hello,” he said awkwardly, slipping his hands into his jeans pockets. Where had his lab coat gone? He'd been wearing it only a moment ago. “Can I help… you?”  
  
The two teenagers turned in his direction. One was a petite girl with thick black hair tumbling in gentle curls over her shoulders and dusk-kissed skin. The other was a taller boy with similar coloring, but Carlos couldn’t really absorb that because the youth had an impossibly wide, ear-to-ear grin and his teeth were triangular with razor serrations. No one, not even Jack Nicholson’s Joker, had a smile like that in real life, and it sent instinctive shivers of panic down Carlos’ spine, whispering,  _here is a predator. He’ll eat you alive._  Suddenly his palms were sweaty.  
  
“Hi!” The boy raised his hand, and the part of Carlos that was eternally a clinical observer noted that he had webbed fingers and wondered about the shape of his family tree and the proximity of his birthplace to the infamous Radon Canyon. “You’re Carlos, right?” The mouth full of shark teeth didn’t seem to give him the slightest trouble speaking. When Carlos failed to do anything other than stand there gaping, the boy continued, “I’m Scott and this is Annie. We’re from the Night Vale High Drama Club.”  
  
Carlos had listened to Cecil’s program earlier, so the familiarity of those words jolted him back into full cognizance. “Oh,” he said dumbly, then, “OH. Right, you guys are doing the, um….” He gestured uselessly. “The play. I heard about it. From, um….” He turned around, meaning to point to his radio, having forgotten entirely where the radio was.  
  
The boy, Scott, seemed to take pity on him. “From Cecil,” he offered, “Right. That’s why we’re here.” He visibly nudged Annie, who came forward unthreateningly extending two colorful pieces of paper to him.  
  
“On behalf of the club, we’d like to offer you a pair of free tickets so you can take Cecil to the play,” she chirped. “And also a coupon to Big Rico’s Pizza in case you want to go for ice cream or something afterward. We’ll be having our cast party there on Saturday evening if you’d like to join us!”  
  
“What? Oh.” Carlos accepted the pieces of paper, each about the size of a dollar bill. “That’s… that’s very kind of you, actually, thank you. Why do I get free tickets?” He cradled them gently, half-expecting them to come alive and bite him… after all, wheat and wheat byproducts were in almost everything. You couldn’t be too careful nowadays.  
  
Annie smiled gently at him. “You don’t,” she explained. “Cecil gets the free tickets for advertising the play for us. We just thought it would make him happier if they, well… came from you.”  
  
Carlos stared down at the tickets in his hand for another moment and then something clicked. “… And the ice cream,” he said a bit suspiciously.  
  
Annie’s smile didn’t fade. “Yes.”  
  
“… You’re sending us on a date.”  
  
“Courtesy of the Night Vale High School Drama Club!” she announced, then lowered her voice to confidential levels. “It’s a lot better than sitting in the parking lot at Arby’s or going around poking the trees. It’s a favor,” she said, seeing his expression. “It isn’t like there’s a ton of fun stuff to do around here, so you should take advantage of the things you can do. If there’s going to be a mandatory stage performance and a mandatory visit to Big Rico’s sometime this weekend, you might as well make a date of it. We got you great seats!” she pointed out, as if that was important, as if it had anything to do with anything when Carlos was just trying to figure out how he was supposed to feel about the entire town being kept apace of every development in his and Cecil’s relationship and, apparently, cheering them on.  
  
Annie seemed to catch onto his dilemma, because she shifted her weight and tilted her pretty head at him. “Carlos, is something wrong? We’re not being too intrusive, are we? It’s just we heard everything on the radio and, you know, everybody likes Cecil, and he really seems to like you, so we just thought it would be nice to help you out. Since you’re not from around here,” she explained.  
  
Scott chimed in. “It must be pretty weird, huh? Coming from out there and then… all this.” He waved a hand to encompass their surroundings. “We’re not totally cut off from the outside, you know,” he said sagely. “We’re aware of how weird we are.”  
  
Carlos rubbed his fingers over the colored paper slips and took a shuddering breath. “I… Yeah, it’s taken a little bit of adjusting. So I guess… yes,” he decided finally, “This was nice of you. Thank you.”  
  
“Our pleasure.” Annie beamed at him, and reached out, folding her small hands over his. For a moment, he found himself totally captured by the deep wellsprings of her eyes. “ _Call him,_ ” she intoned, and the words thrummed along his bones. She gave a slight nod, which seemed to want a response so he returned it. Only then did she release him and the air seemed to come rushing back, leaving him reeling and lost.  
  
“Are… are you two in the play?” Carlos wondered, adjusting his tie again, searching for normalcy in small talk. Was it unusually warm in the lab? His eyes wandered back to Scott’s smile, trying to figure out how his mouth worked. If only he had a more extensive background in biology….  
  
“We’re in the club,” Scott replied, “but you won’t see me on-stage, I’ll be in the sound booth. Annie’s got a small part, though.” He turned to her expectantly, and she snapped up her cue.  
  
“I’m playing Christabella Hermetica-Wilson, the prophet woman who stood at the first siege of the great Night Vale Temple!” she announced. “I have a really good soliloquy explaining Night Vale’s history with spirits and other dimensions, and I get to wear a soft-meat crown!”  
  
Carlos blanched. “Real meat?” He felt stupid when she giggled.  
  
“No, you would think it’d save on the special effects budget,” she informed him, “but actually real soft-meat crowns are grounds for re-education so it's going to be fake. Plus I wouldn’t want to accidentally pull anything through the interdimensional folds,” she laughed. “We almost lost the school that way once already this year! Well,” she said to his befuddled look. “It was really nice meeting you. Um, tell Cecil we’d love to see him at the party.” She waved and went to rejoin her escort, who gave her such a hungry, lascivious look Carlos almost bristled, but then he realized that Scott wasn’t really hungry or lascivious; it was just his face. He held the door for Annie, and she said, “Bye Carlos!” as she trotted through.  
  
Scott eyed Carlos for a moment as if he was a particularly delectable morsel, then followed her out.  
  
Carlos stared after them for a moment, then looked down at his own hand which held a pair of tickets to the school play and one shiny buy-one-get-one coupon for Big Rico’s ice cream.  
  
 _Call him._  
  
His heart thumped.  
  
He fumbled in his pocket, found his smart phone (which had taken to giving such bizarre displays that he’d had to turn off the clock function) and began thumbing the numbers. The broadcast had just concluded so Cecil would still be at the station. In his ear the phone rang and rang, and then Cece, the new switchboard operator, picked up.  
  
“Um, it’s Carlos,” he said hesitantly, and then with a greater sense of the rightness of his cause, added, “I’d like to speak to Cecil.”  
  
Cece, who spoke only ancient Sumerian, intoned something dire-sounding into the phone that made Carlos’ ears ring. He didn’t understand it, but he waited patiently and a few seconds later, Cecil picked up the phone.  
  
“Welcome to Night Vale, this is Cecil,” he said melodiously, and Carlos smiled despite himself.


	2. A Catapult, Secret Names Written Microscopically Upon Winged Blasphemies, and Municipally Approved Witchcraft.

“Scott!” Jasmine’s call was nearly drowned out by the unholy howl of the school siren and the slam of lockers up and down the hall. When her quarry didn’t turn, she stalked over and yanked the strap of his backpack off his shoulder. “SCOTT.”  
  
“Waaaaagh!” he yelped, flailing for balance as his book-laden pack took a sudden plunge. He caught it, straightened, and beamed at her with both rows of gleaming teeth. “Hey, Jaz!”  
  
“Hey yourself.” She tossed her hair and folded her arms across her cheer uniform top, just barely concealing the logo of the Night Vale Spiderwolves. “What’s this I hear about a weekend trip to Lake Omen and some brilliant idea for a senior prank?” Students pushing for the front doors jostled her as they passed and Scott adjusted his backpack, swinging his locker door closed.  
  
“I would be happy to talk to you about that in private,” he said cheerfully, “preferably away from prying freshmen and potted plants. Would you like to take a walk with me down Summerset? I could use a hand pulling the catapult for a completely unrelated reason.”  
  
Jaz eyed him with amusement. “You have the keys to the catapult?” Scott flashed her a shark’s grin and spun the pair of small, round metal keys around his index finger. Her eyebrows rose and her full mouth pursed in appreciation. “Hm. Okay then. You know, most boys who take me out don’t make me do manual labor.”  
  
“But it’s for a good cause,” Scott assured her earnestly.   
  
A few minutes later a very strange parade turned onto Summerset Drive. A flat-bottomed pushcart rattled over the sidewalk, its wheels squeaking protests at the rough terrain. Behind it a tall, slingshot-style catapult rolled on modified bike tires, lashed to the pushcart’s handles by wrapped clotheslines on either side. Jasmine and Scott walked between the ropes like a pair of mules, pushing the cart and hauling the catapult along behind, nearly unrecognizable in their specially reinforced umbrella-hats. The cart was laden with small mismatched boxes, most of them Amazon shipping boxes, and a few paper grocery bags all trailing bits of white nylon and string. Shoppers outside the Ralph’s waved to them cheerfully between dodging the dive-bombing birds, then turned away and studiously ignored them once they saw where they were headed.  
  
“Are these all donations?” Jaz asked as they found a good, clear spot out of the road to park the catapult. “That’s a better response than I would have thought you could get, especially since you, y’know, can’t acknowledge the existence of certain things.” A bird crashed into her umbrella hat and knocked it slightly askew but it had been made to withstand a rain of small animals up to ten pounds so it wasn’t damaged.  
  
“We’re calling it an ‘extended survival adventure’,” Scott confessed as they locked the wheels into place and began wrapping the small white parachutes. “Since Cecil broadcasted everything that makes it easier – we don’t have to refer to it by name but everyone knows what we’re talking about.” A bird swooped at him and he casually backhanded it away.  
  
“You know, Cecil gets special dispensation,” Jaz reminded him, pulling the slingshot back a little so he could place a package in the pouch. “What if the you-know-whats don’t like you raining boxes down into the you-know-where?”  
  
Scott braced his feet and began to haul back on the elastic straps. “Well,” he panted, “If Intern Dana (or her doppleganger) isn’t dead yet, that means they haven’t killed her. Right?”  
  
“… That would be the obvious conclusion, yeah,” Jaz said dryly.  
  
“Well I’m saying if they didn’t kill her….” Scott let go of the catapult. The box went tumbling end over end in a graceful arc, scattering a trio of the circling birds. As it turned, the wrapped parachute caught the wind and snapped out, and the box fell in a slow drift beyond the tall fence surrounding the Dog park. “… Then they must not want her dead. I mean, you agree right, that if they wanted her dead she’d be dead?”  
  
“I don’t know if anything regarding THEM is certain,” Jaz hedged, “but okay, I’ll accept that hypothesis.”  
  
“Well, if they don’t want her dead, then they shouldn’t object to us helping keep her alive,” Scott concluded. “That’s my logic, anyway. And if they don’t object to a station intern in the you-know-where, what’s a few boxes? Was that shot a little bit short?”  
  
Jaz pursed her lips and took look from the corner of her eyes. “I don’t think it got stuck in the hedge.”  
  
“Great. It’s hard to aim when you can’t look directly at it,” Scott complained, and loaded another box into the catapult. “So I’ve been thinking about our senior prank.”  
  
“So I’ve heard.”  
  
“It should be something really awesome,” Scott grunted as he hauled back on the slingshot pouch. “Something everybody will be talking about. And it occurred to me that most senior classes that have a drama club also do a senior play. So I thought, what if we get the whole senior class in on the senior play, and our senior play is our senior prank?”  
  
Jaz gave him a dubious look. “How on earth is a play a prank?” She moved around to the other side of the catapult as, calling hoarsely, the three offended birds swooped around to slash at her with their claws. They veered off before they could crash into the catapult and left a shower of chewed-looking feathers behind.  
  
“Well…” Scott made a noise of effort and let the slingshot go. The box arched high over the hedge and tumbled down, and the parachute barely unfurled before it disappeared beyond the fence. Scott winced. “Did that one hit? I didn’t hear it hit.”  
  
“It’s hard to hear anything over those noises,” Jaz pointed out, unintentionally referring to the loud static buzzing ambient to the dog park, then clapped her hand over her mouth. “I mean… what noises? The, um… the cars….”  
  
“The noise from the Ralphs, I knew what you meant,” Scott said hastily. “Grocery stores are SO noisy.”  
  
“Aren’t they?”   
  
Jaz was still pale so Scott reached over and physically turned her away from the Dog Park. “We did a good job packing, so I’m sure it’ll be fine. Anyway, we were talking about a senior play which is absolutely a municipally approved topic, right?”  
  
“Of course,” she said, pressing her fingers to her forehead. “Of course. A play as a prank.”  
  
“Which is where you come in,” Scott explained as he loaded one of the grocery bags and made sure the handles were securely tied together. “For the epic prank I’m considering I think we’ll need a little witchcraft.”  
  
“Municipally approved witchcraft,” Jaz corrected him softly.  
  
“Right, municipally approved witchcraft. Anyway, we can talk about it over the weekend if you and the coven will come up to the lake with me. We’ve got everything set up for a really good summoning; should give those kids from Desert Bluffs a hell of a time. What do you say?” He flashed his teeth over the catapult pouch and she put her hands on her hips.  
  
“Scott Mayfield, don’t smile at me like that, I’m immune to your charm,” she declared. “But your ideas are intriguing and I’d like to know more so yes, I’ll bring the coven up to the lake.”  
  
“Great!” Scott let go and the bag flew over the hedge like a fat, sluggish bumblebee. “That means I can ask you what I really want to ask.”  
  
“And what’s that?” she asked with longsuffering patience as she handed him another box.  
  
“Well, we’re going to leave from the cast party after Saturday Night’s performance,” he explained. “I know you’re going because it’s mandatory, but if you deign to look upon me with any favor at all….”  
  
“Elder gods,” she muttered, and rolled her eyes, but she was smiling.  
  
“… Then I would like to implore you,” he continued, “with greatest respect and admiration, to attend the Saturday night performance and the cast party afterward as my date. For tolerating my company I will of course compensate you….”  
  
“Of course…”  
  
“… By paying for your mandatory at Rico’s Pizza AND,” he added, thrusting one finger in the air, “giving you and any luggage you think is necessary a free ride to the lake which is a substantial gas savings,” he informed her, and grinned. “It’s a low-pressure offer, but it would make me very happy if you’d consider it.”  
  
“Scott!” Jasmine was laughing, shaking her head at him. “Do you remember that time we snuck away at Kelly Renquest’s Samhain party?”  
  
He gave her a Cheshire smile. “How could I forget?”  
  
“And all of Spring Break when your parents were in reeducation and I came over and helped you house-sit?”  
  
“Definitely a highlight of my post-virginity years,” he agreed.  
  
Jasmine flopped her hands. “So we’re not precisely dating, but you still don’t have to do this whole song and dance every time. You know that right?”  
  
Scott let the sling pouch dangle and took her by the hand, spinning her on the tarmac and sweeping her into a low dip just in time to snatch a dive-bombing bird out of thin air and toss it aside, barely ruffled as per the request of the City Council. She squeaked, then laughed, threading her fingers in between his carefully so she wouldn’t bruise the webbing. “Well there’s three reasons for this particular song and dance,” he told her, bumping his nose gently against hers. “First, you could always say no and if you did I’d respect that. Second, it makes me really happy when you say yes.”  
  
“Okay.” She couldn’t help grinning back. “What’s the third?”  
  
“Because you’re so totally awesome,” he told her. “And every time I see you, I think, ‘that girl is so totally awesome. I should ask her out.’ And then I do.”  
  
“You,” she informed him, “are the corniest corn-dog who EVER corned.”  
  
“I have deep-running character flaws,” he agreed solemnly. “But you adore me anyway. So what do you say, Jaz?” He pulled her back up and gently spun her until her cheerleading skirt flared, first out and then back into his arms. “Think about it until Saturday?”  
  
“I don’t have to think about it,” she grumbled good-naturedly. Another bird crashed into her umbrella-hat and she swatted it. “Of course I’ll go with you, I don’t know why you’d think I wouldn’t. Corn dog.”  
  
“Well you know what they say,” Scott reasoned, shrugging as he grabbed the pouch and began to pull it back. “Better to ask for permission than be forced to grovel for forgiveness. You want to try this one?” He held out the pouch, pulled taut, and stood aside to make room for her.  
  
“Oh…” Jasmine brushed off her skirt. “That’s okay. I’m not a good aim when there’s nothing there to aim for, or look at, or acknowledge in any way.”  
  
“Yeah, it’s mostly a useless talent,” Scott agreed as he let fly. “But once in a long while it comes in handy.”  
  
x-x-x  
  
Carlos’ lab coat turned out to be bundled up inside one of his specimen cages. He didn’t know how it had gotten there – all his cages were empty, yet there it had been, crumpled, wrinkles pressed into folds and faintly warm as if something living had used it for a nest. When he shook it out, stiff black hairs billowed into the air and drifted down to cover his shoes. He sniffed the coat – it smelled vaguely of sulfur. Fortunately both the smell and the hairs had come out in the wash.  
  
In the end it mattered little because his newly clean lab coat was now covered in blood and bits of black feathers, plus some strange, oily stains he hadn’t had the chance to identify yet. His formerly-empty specimen cages were now full and rattling against one another as his captives, a set of vicious, angry blackbirds, flapped and fluttered and squawked and generally made as much of a nuisance of themselves as possible.  
  
Cecil arrived before he’d finished cleaning all the wounds the birds left on him. Bare-armed and still bleeding a little, he went to answer the door chime and found his pet radio announcer beaming at him in greeting. “Carlos,” he sang. “You’re bleeding! Don’t tell me you’ve finally started making offerings to the Council.” Before Carlos could answer, Cecil said, “That’s such a relief, I mean, really. You wouldn’t want them to catch up with you come tax season! What’s all the noise?”   
  
“It’s not a blood offering,” Carlos sighed, rubbing the back of his neck. “I caught some of those weird birds that have been dive-bombing the citizens so I could perform some tests. Turns out they’re both nasty and accurate,” he grumbled, rubbing at a set of slashes along his forearm. “And I think there’s something wrong with them, they’re all covered in some kind of faintly acidic chemical that smells like cumin.”  
  
“You trapped the birds?” Carlos had begun to walk back into his lab proper, and Cecil chased after him. “I specifically said the City Council asked us NOT to antagonize the wildlife. What if they’re the vengeful arm of an extraplanar being or the watchful eyes of some dark and unnameable god? And you still haven’t installed a bloodstone circle?” he demanded, his voice gaining an octave in sheer exasperation. “CARLOS! You can’t just mess around with forces you don’t understand! Doing tests on a few trees was one thing but this goes directly against the City Council’s decrees!”  
  
“I have to do something,” Carlos protested. “These crows have been attacking people. Haven’t you noticed the power fluctuations that started yesterday?”  
  
Cecil sat down on Carlos’ stool and rubbed a hand through his hair. “Sometimes,” he sighed, “I think you don’t listen to a word I say.”  
  
“Cecil…” Carlos fidgeted a little and shifted his weight. “I… sometimes I don’t understand a word you say.”  
  
Cecil looked up at him, his tattoos writhing in agitation. “I don’t see how that’s possible,” he replied in annoyance. “I only ever speak Council-approved languages.” The deep violet tentacles flexed over his wrists and then curled back up, but the sleeves of his tunic were too short to hide them completely.   
  
Carlos sat down across from him and raked his fingers through his own hair. That always served to distract Cecil so he found himself doing it fairly often lately, only half-conscious of his reasons. “I think there’s something very wrong with these birds, something unnatural,” he said. “And I don’t think it means anything good for Night Vale. I just want to get to the bottom of it before anyone gets hurt.”  
  
“Oh, Carlos.” Cecil sighed, but he managed a wry smile. “Perfect, beautiful, naïve Carlos. Is this going to be like the clocks again?”  
  
“I’m still working on the clocks.” Carlos turned his head so Cecil wouldn’t see the embarrassed heat rise to his face. “Look, you’re the only one who’s shown any interest in helping with my work. I know the science itself doesn’t interest you, but I hoped you’d help me with these experiments, just….” He trailed off, let the unspoken words fade into oblivion:  _just so I know I’m not crazy._  
  
Cecil was studying him. “You mean we’d just sit for a while and talk about things while you do blatantly illegal and dangerous experiments on malevolent and possibly-sentient wildlife?” he said with a crooked smile. “I guess I could keep you company for a bit. It’s NOT because I have a ‘thing’ for lawbreakers you know,” he added imperiously. “That’s not it at all.”  
  
Carlos smiled. “Of course not, Cecil,” he agreed as he picked up the first aid kit and offered it to his guest. “Not at all.”  
  
“Because I’ll have you know I’ve earned SEVERAL alert citizenship stamps,” he informed Carlos as he wrapped his hands, warm and unexpectedly strong, around Carlos’ wrists. He guided Carlos’ hands onto his thighs, and Carlos rubbed the soft corduroy fabric and took comfort in its familiarity while Cecil ripped open antiseptic swabs. “And my re-education record is excellent. I’ve hardly EVER had to surrender brain tissue or have my memories altered. If we get caught here we’ll both be subject to re-education,” he reminded Carlos as he gently dabbed the swabs over Carlos’ lacerated skin, and flashed a soft, apologetic smile when he winced. “Sometimes I forget that you still feel pain. That must be terrible,” he said gently, and Carlos gave a faint laugh.  
  
“It’s not fun,” he admitted. “But you know what helps?”  
  
Cecil’s eyes were wide and earnest. “I’d love to know.”  
  
Carlos turned his hands over and dragged his fingertips along Cecil’s forearms, causing his tattoos to wiggle and flex under his touch. “This,” he said, and as Cecil shivered slightly, he leaned in and brushed his mouth against his. “This.”  
  
Cecil promptly forgot about playing nursemaid. He reached up and sank both hands into Carlos’ hair, pulling him into a slow, deep kiss, shivery-soft and lingering in the best way, that open-mouth way, touched by the very tips of tongues and sharing tight and stuttered breaths. Guilt curled in Carlos’ belly –kissing Cecil was very nice in itself, but to him it was an anchor to what was solid and real. There was a warm and dreamy pleasure in it that soothed the low-grade panic that boiled within him even when he slept. It was different for him – he was from Outside. He could  _feel_  the slippage of time, space, and sanity in his bones like strange geometries that confused the eye with their innate wrongness. He knew deep in his soul that while he worked and puzzled and flirted with madness in Night Vale, the outside world ticked by in blissful normalcy, all the laws of physics in perfect alignment, never wavering from patterns established at the first glorious explosion of the universe. By contrast Night Vale was a creeping paranoia, the pall of conspiracy… and of course there WAS a conspiracy: everyone in Night Vale happily admitted to the conspiracy and upheld it whenever they could with something akin to patriotism. Cecil had the same bright-eyed fanaticism but for some reason he was more tempting than the others. When they touched, when they kissed, it felt like the pressure of all that slippage eased a bit. Like if Carlos embraced Night Vale, Night Vale would embrace him too.  
  
Cecil felt like another bit of madness, possibly the most dangerous one, because if he indulged too often it would swallow him whole. But Cecil was warm, and soft, and welcoming, and comforting. He felt like if he could drown in Cecil that would be a lovely, peaceful way to succumb. So he found himself surrendering hard-won ground by inches, calling Cecil when there was no reason, reaching out for his company and the tranquility it brought him. At first it was need but as Cecil wiggled into the cracks in his psyche the need became affection, was becoming adoration, threatened to become love.  
  
That was not, Carlos thought as he slid into Cecil’s lap, the worst of fates.  
  
  
  
Some time later Cecil chuckled softly as he pressed his forehead against Carlos’. “We have an audience,” he announced, and Carlos realized the lab had been oddly silent for a while. He looked toward the cages and found the birds all hanging on the sides of their pens, talons hooked through the wire mesh, beady eyes of red-rimmed black regarding them. One fluffed its feathers as he watched, but it didn’t caw.   
  
“Huh,” he murmured, lulled by the rhythmic stroke of Cecil’s fingers through his hair. “Wonder what they find so interesting.”  
  
“Oh,” Cecil said dreamily, “they probably have minds full of savagery and destruction, atonal and divergent strands of reason unrecognizable to us. Human affection is probably a novelty to them… you know how those Extraplanar Entities can be.” He smiled against Carlos’ mouth. “Your lips puff up when we’ve been kissing,” he observed, and Carlos blushed.  
  
“Yours don’t.”  
  
“Of course not.” Cecil wound strands of Carlos’ dark hair around his fingers. “I’m not the perfect one.”  
  
Carlos was self-conscious about the birds now that he knew they were watching and squirmed a little under their scrutiny. “What’s perfect about having chapped lips?”  
  
“Everything,” Cecil sighed, and covered his mouth with his. Carlos allowed that and the kiss after it, but then he pulled back and put his hands on Cecil’s shoulders.  
  
“I should get started,” he said, a weak excuse, but Cecil accepted it with a grave nod. He slid down and straightened his dirty lab coat and his glasses, clearing his throat, fussing a little as he tried to put himself back together.  
  
Cecil also slid off the stool and promptly face-planted on the floor.  
  
Carlos yelped and dropped next to him, tugging him over. “Cecil? What happened?” he asked before the truth dawned on him and he pressed the heel of his hand against his forehead. “It was me, wasn’t it?”  
  
“Probably.” Cecil smiled broadly.  
  
“I stayed too long.”  
  
  
“Not long enough.” He gave a blissful sigh.  
  
  
“I made your legs fall asleep.”  
  
“That’s possible. There are so MANY sensations when I touch you, sometimes it’s hard to distinguish.”  
  
“I’m so sorry,” he swore, and helped Cecil back up, leaning him against the counter for support. Cecil gamely hopped up onto his counter and sat and once Carlos was assured that he wouldn’t topple from his perch, he moved one of his microscopes next to Cecil and plucked a torn feather from his coat. Pressing the feather between a pair of slides, he turned the focus knob until he could see the individual barbules. “…Okay, that’s weird.”  
  
“You keep saying that,” Cecil remarked. “I wonder what your basis for comparison is.”  
  
“My basis for comparison is that feathers are normally made up of thousands of tiny barbs that overlap in an interlocking pattern,” Carlos shot back. “Granted Taxonomy isn’t my forte but I know that much. Take a look at this.” He carefully spun the microscope so Cecil could lean over and peer into it. “Look at the coloring. It’s very subtle but it’s clearly not random. I’ve never seen that kind of marking on a bird before….”  
  
Cecil jerked back from the microscope as if it had burned him and fell off the counter – fortunately this time he landed on his feet. Carlos reached out for him but before he could, Cecil had grabbed the microscope and the slide. “Don’t look again,” he said hastily as he wrapped both objects tightly in the trailing hem of his tunic. Carlos blinked.  
  
“But…”  
  
Cecil reached out with his free hand, shifting his burden into the crook of the other elbow, and gripped Carlos’ jaw. “Listen to me,” he said, and paused, rubbing his thumb across Carlos’ chin. “So perfect and square… ahem. Don’t look again. Get rid of the birds. A flamethrower would probably work well for that, you do have a flamethrower, don’t you?”  
  
“No,” Carlos said, and grabbed his elbow. “No, you don’t get to do this. You don’t get to just freak out and run off with my microscope and my samples….”  
  
“Beautiful Carlos.” Cecil kissed him quickly. “You’re really very sweet but you get yourself into the most ridiculous messes. The birds are blasphemies not meant for our eyes. Their feathers form the Secret Names, at least, I assume they do because reading them is thought crime so I’ve never actually seen them. Even knowing about them is rather sketchy so don’t tell anyone I told you.” He pressed his fingers against Carlos’ mouth and Carlos blew out an exasperated sigh.  
  
“Where are you going with that? It’s expensive,” he pointed out futilely. Cecil just smiled.  
  
“I’m going to perform my duty as a good citizen!” he said brightly. “Everything will be just fine. Remember what I said about the flamethrower.” He put a hand on Carlos’ shoulder and with surprising force, shoved him down onto the nearest stool. “I love you. Sit right there.”  
  
In his shock, Carlos actually sat there for a moment while Cecil made off with his microscope. The door chime marked his exit from the repurposed gas station. Shaking his head, trying to make sense of things, Carlos replayed the entire scene in his mind and remembered the wiggly tentacles of Cecil’s tattoos curled up tight like crustaceans in knotted clusters. Hiding. Afraid.  
  
 _Liar,_ he thought, and hopped off the stool to follow him.


End file.
